


Schatz

by RhetoricFemme



Series: Scenic World AU [13]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Adoption, Gen, Scenic World AU, about 12 years prior to the start of the story, attractive dad who has no clue what it is he's doing, sweet kiddos, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 16:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17749004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhetoricFemme/pseuds/RhetoricFemme
Summary: Jean had smiled, understood his dad’s obnoxious sense of humor, and that there was nothing to worry about. Both father and son had reacted with complete surprise when Bertholt and Reiner scrambled to their feet in a panic.





	Schatz

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Many thanks if you're taking the time to read this little story. While almost the entire thing is in English, there are a few lines in German. If you'd like the translation, you can find them in the notes at the end of the story. :)

He’d meant for it to be funny.

An entirely harmless curse word muttered mid-game from the mouth of a twelve year old, made all the more amusing for the fact it’d been expressed in German.

Jakob had rounded the corner in an instant, his voice booming. Loud and abrupt.

“Bitte wiederholen Sie?!”

Jean had smiled, understood his dad’s obnoxious sense of humor, and that there was nothing to worry about. Both father and son had reacted with complete surprise when Bertholt and Reiner scrambled to their feet in a panic.

The entire scene had spanned less than a minute, though the seconds dragged on as if for a lifetime. Bertholt had taken control of the situation, a supportive hand across Reiner’s chest while apologizing profusely with the same German dialect Reiner had initially cursed in.

One by one, the sober expressions fell from their young faces when they realized Jakob was now standing in as much shock as they had initially been in.

Jean had never seen anything like it, and now took it upon himself to be a quiet-spoken diplomat explaining that his father had only been playing with them. It had taken a sincere, almost self-deprecating apology on Jakob’s behalf, followed by his wife requesting his presence in the kitchen to entirely defuse their painfully awkward situation.

What a relief it had been when Jean had taken their game off pause, gently placing a controller in Reiner’s hands and deciding Bertholt would get to play the winner.

They’d stayed late that night. Calming their falsely rattled nerves within a game console that was years older than any of them. They hadn’t meant to lose track of time, and on a school night no less.

“No problem.” Jakob had assured the boys as they climbed into the back of the car. “We’ll tell Mrs. Dreyse the grownups weren’t paying attention to the clock.”

Jean had stayed behind. Eleven years old and no excuses left to his name, there was no way he was getting out of bedtime. It was no matter, was far from the first time he hadn’t accompanied his two best friends back home.

Caught somewhere between the lingering sense of childhood novelty and the increasing need for camaraderie, Jean had no trouble getting both Bertholt and Reiner to bump fists with him as they made their way out the door.

Several minutes into an unusually quiet drive, Jakob peered into the backseat where Reiner sat quietly with his hands fidgeting in his lap. Bertholt’s head lay pressed against the cool glass of the window, gazing at a sky that had been muted by the continuous glow of city lights.

Thoughts had been traipsing through Jakob’s mind the entire night, ever since Susan had pulled him into the kitchen for no other reason than to maybe save face. It wasn’t the first time his attention had gone to seemingly audacious places. New inquiries were somehow always adding themselves to the already daunting pile of unanswered questions.

This time Jakob knew he would either need to speak up now, or allow his curiosity to leave well enough alone.

“Sprichst du Jungs gerne auf Deutsch?”

He’d prepared himself to be met with prolonged silence. Instead, Jakob is surprised for a second time that night when he watches Reiner shrink into himself while Bertholt answers with confidence and ease.

“Ja schon, aber nicht Reiner.” Like so many other contentious matters, Bertholt has accepted it as a part of life. “Reiner sagt nur kleine Wörter auf Deutsch. Aber ich habe mich entschieden, es weiter zu sagen.”

Jakob continues to glance back through the mirror. Tries his best to imagine how it must be to grow too soon. To walk a line between carving space for oneself while also not taking up too much room in a place where everyone else always comes and goes.

The Dreyses were kind enough to respect Bertholt and Reiner’s wishes not to be split up, though their request came at the price of growing up in a house bursting with what amounted to passersby. Children of all ages, some of them too young to understand they’d ever experienced a stopover onto their new families and lives.

“Ist das okay, Reiner?” Jakob addresses him specifically, his voice level yet personal when he speaks to Reiner as neither a child nor an adult, but a young man. How many well-meaning people, Jakob wonders, did it take for these kids to train themselves to rely on no one other than themselves? One more unanswerable question.

“Ja.”

He nods from the front seat, occasionally looking to see if either boy bothers to look up from their personal distractions. Never quite during the moments when Jakob is looking, but he can hear that at least one of them does.

“Als ich ein Junge war, habe ich zu Hause Deutsch gesprochen.” Maybe he shouldn’t be talking about his own childhood, Jakob decides. The one he recalls fondly, complete with hardworking, loving parents and immigrant grandparents who lived under the same roof as Jakob until the day they’d died.

It’s all anyone else says for the rest of the ride. When they reach their destination Jakob pulls up alongside the Main Street curb, throws the car into _park_ and doesn’t hesitate to walk the boys to the front door.

He can’t bring himself to call it their home. Not when he’s seen the looks on their faces whenever it’s time to go back after an evening or weekend come to visit with Jean. Curious and exuberant, Jean had rarely been without playmates in his life, though he’d seldom had what either of his parents would refer to as actual friends.

Neighborhood kids who were polite enough, but stopped coming around soon after the Playstation had broke. Soccer buddies and band kids he’d see frequently certain times of the year. They were all good kids in their own ways. Some of them sweet, even.

Jakob couldn’t say he believed in the idea of bad kids, per se. But even so, there was something else to Reiner and Bertholt, to the point where he couldn’t settle on referring to them as merely good.

They were patient with Jean, and whether they knew what he was talking about or not listened to the myriad things he had to say. Even in the places where their commonalities and interest began to break off, the three of them managed to ride a similar wavelength.

While Jakob presumes it isn’t impossible, neither boy has attempted to invite Jean over to the house. Walking toward the steps of the two-story Victorian home, Jakob wonders whether or not there are many personal touches worth mentioning inside of the old house.

But at least, he tells himself, everyone is kind here. Jakob had made sure of that, if nothing else, on the first day he and Jean had introduced themselves when picking the boys up from the group home. He’d left not knowing how to feel, honestly; asking himself what right he had to implore upon the personal lives of two boys he’d only recently met.

Nearly a year had gone by since that point. And though neither Jakob nor Susan ever ventured inside the old Victorian house, they’d since become something like patrons of the front door.

He walks behind them, now, figuring that if he were impersonal enough to just drop them at the curb he might as well just tell the boys to tuck and roll.

Neither Bertholt nor Reiner make an attempt to quiet their steps on the old wooden stairs that groan beneath their feet. Jakob has since learned there’s no way around it, and really, most of it is drowned out on account of myriad voices on the other side of the front door.

“S’not always this loud.” Reiner tries to apologize for the cacophonous blend of laughter and tears. “Some of the girls try to push their luck during bedtime routines.”

“I mean.” Jakob smile gently. “ _I_ would.”

Reiner smiles at that, catches sight of something different in the man standing beside him. It piques Reiner’s curiosity, creates a little snag in his heart, though as soon as the front door opens it’s gone again. He tries not to think about the little tug inside of him that wants it to come back. Still has no idea how in a short enough time, what an incessant jerking that little tug will come to be.

That look is replaced by an equally interesting change, however, as Jakob straightens his spine before flagging Mrs. Dreyse down. She’s halfway out of the room, tending to another child’s needs when she diverts toward Jakob’s request for attention.

Bertholt and Reiner say their goodnights here, each accepting Jakob’s pats on the back before shuffling wordlessly inside.

Though Mrs. Dreyse is now standing directly in front of him, Jakob’s eyes trail after Reiner, watching as the boy scoops a smiling toddler off of the living room floor. A cascade of blonde curls lands in the middle of Reiner’s face as he holds the little girl upside down, blowing raspberries where her shirt rides up before placing her atop his shoulders and disappearing around the corner.

“Did you need something, Mr. Kirschstein?”

Oh.

“Jakob.” He corrects her pleasantly. “I… I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Tired, yes. Stretched a bit thin at times, to the point of being perpetually unkempt, but Mrs. Dreyse always does her best. “Anyone else, Jakob, and I’d have worried about them coming in late.”

In what is certainly not his smoothest move, Jakob gives her finger-guns.

“Yes.” He quips. “And that’s what I wanted to apologize for. It won’t happen again.”

She’d done her due diligence to Bertholt and Reiner, and looked into the parents of the boy they insisted wanted to be their actual friend.

It never ceases to amuse her when Jakob comes by. This socially awkward local millionaire who still lives in a modest part of town with his working class wife and their own boy. Already convinced he must be a good dad, she surmises that he must be a hardass when it comes to work.

Not unlike herself.

She nods at him, warmed to see that people like this still exist. She doesn’t let her charges out the door easily, even when they’ve been in this house since they were the smallest of children. Especially since they’ve been in this house, as a package deal, since they were the smallest of children.

“It’s alright.” Her smile is warm, though she’s already trying to shut the front door. “Make sure you tell Susan I said hi.”

Jakob nods firmly, watching as Mrs. Dreyse lets the storm door close, that same feeling in his gut he gets when he and Erwin are in the midst of brokering one of those life-changing, make-or-break deals. It happens before Jakob is ready when the door to the old Victorian house closes entirely, latching shut for the remainder of the night.

Heading back toward the car, the steps creak for him the same as they had for Bertholt and Reiner. Jakob feels sick to his stomach the entire way home.

The drive back is an incomplete, unwelcome brand of silence the likes of which neither his cell phone nor the radio is able to fix. It isn’t much of an improvement when he makes the ten mile drive accompanied by nothing more than his own contemplation.

Jean has long since gone to bed by the time Jakob walks back through their front door.

It’d been plenty lively here not more than an hour ago. Now, standing alone in his darkened living room, Jakob is painfully aware that at least for the night, there is no productive work left for him to do.

Double-checking the locks and turning out any remaining lights, Jakob goes through all the regular motions, relies on his muscle memory to secure the house before turning in for the night.

The lights are all off, save for one, where Susan reads from her side of the bed. She doesn’t bother looking up from the page, though she lifts the covers for Jakob to get in, greeting him with a warm foot trailing slowly up his leg.

“The boys get home okay?”

It’s an asinine question, really, and both of them know it. He reminds himself that her sarcasm is one of the qualities that caused Jakob to fall in love with Susan in the first place. Her comment isn’t an attempt to insult Jakob’s intelligence, and so he makes no effort to insult hers.

“I got them back to Mrs. Dreyse. They’re fine.”

Susan hums.

It’s the same sound she used to make when Jakob would annoy the hell out of her, back when she was still just a college Freshman.

It’s the same sound she used to make at Levi when he struggled to say he wanted her friendship and offered back-handed compliments, instead.

It’s the same hum she makes when Jean omits details to any number of requests in an effort at leveraging the odds his mother will tell him _yes_ , instead of _no_.

Susan snaps her book shut with a hum. Turns out the bedside lamp, and nestles into Jakob’s side for the night with a sigh.

“I guess that’s alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> If I got any of these wrong, or they don't sound natural, feel free to let me know! <3
> 
> Bitte wiederholen Sie?! - Please repeat that?!
> 
> Sprichst du Jungs gerne auf Deutsch? - Do you boys enjoy speaking in German?
> 
> Ja schon, aber nicht Reiner. - Yes, but not Reiner.
> 
> Reiner sagt nur kleine Wörter auf Deutsch. Aber ich habe mich entschieden, es weiter zu sagen. - Reiner only says a few words in German. But I chose to keep speaking it.
> 
> Als ich ein Junge war, habe ich zu Hause Deutsch gesprochen. - When I was a boy, I spoke German at home.


End file.
